The connected home gets a little closer

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 08, 2013 — Futurists have long touted the idea of the connected home, where appliances and chores can be managed with the swipe of a finger. While it has yet to become reality, companies at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show are striving to shift the focus from home entertainment to the tech-savvy home.

Smart appliances, such as refrigerators, washers and dryers, continue to be the focus for larger electronic companies, including Samsung and LG. While these products have been around for years, consumers have yet to fully adopt the added functionality.

LG is hoping to make it easier to use the appliances’ enhanced functions. With the tag line “Touch the Smart Life,” the company showcased several products that use Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that lets you touch your phone (with support for Android models) to appliances to control settings, check the contents of the fridge while on a grocery run or remotely start a robot vacuum to clean the house.

The connected home also falls into the trend of the ‘Internet of Everything’ — the idea of ubiquitous computing and connected, well, everything. If there is one smaller company that looks like the successful model of this trend, it is Nest. Nest is attending CES to continue to promote its thermostats, and Mullins said he feels focusing on a single item is a good idea for companies trying to get connected products into the home.

“I think this whole thing, the Internet of Things, is going to take a little bit of time to progress. We’re definitely not looking to take giant leaps and bounds, but we want to start off with a product, get it into homes, and get people to start to connect with it on a daily basis. And then from that we can expand out. But for now, it’s focus on the central piece — that’s the one thing we have to get right,” he said, adding one of the keys to success is “very little friction” with consumers, citing important factors such as ease of use and installation.

App-based home solutions are very hot this year, with companies such as iSmart Alarm showing at CES. The company offers an app to connect your iPhone with motion sensors, contact sensors and cameras to help manage home security. The benefit, it says, is not being forced to pay a security company a monthly monitoring fee, as well as the ability to take the devices with you when you move, as opposed to picking up a new bill for expensive installation services.